After

Nolikka Toin was running, and then she wasn't.

The bit in between never did come clear.

A lot of the rest came back. Slowly, but it came back.

One morning she woke from a dream about swimming with a million fish turning and diving in perfect concert, and found the memory, clear and hard as a pearl in the palm of her hand, of Haraila swearing like a dockhand as the calm voice of the newscaster talked about Noir, about Malkalen, about war.

That was the first time she had anything in between brushing her teeth at the basin, shrip-flavoured toothpaste sharp on her tongue, and the crushing pain as  they showed her how the collar worked.

She'd been told about the war, of course. It was why she was there, the pallet thin between her spine and the concrete floor every night, scooping the scant mouthful of sour casein meal from the bowl they dropped in front of her every morning, shuffling with the others to the laboratory.

Remembering it didn't make it feel any more real, even if now it was something she'd heard on the news rather than something someone had told her. War. Ships firing on each other and exploding in the deep dark of space.

Insane.

But here she was.

Haraila swearing and the recall order and the noise breaking out all around them in the corridors as they ran for the ship, voices raised, Gallente accents ...

Running.

And then not.

Lying in the dark with a headache making spots of light pulse and dance behind her eyes. A man saying Lie still. They hit you. Do you remember?

Not that she could tell it was dark, of course, except she could. She'd always been able to, although neither she nor the doctors could ever explain.

The man - Oinola, he said his name was, a doctor - thought it was the blow to the head. Nol was too dizzy and sick to correct him.

He swore at their guards ... their wardens. Called them war-criminals, told them You've blinded this girl.

She heard the dull slap of the shot and the heavier thud as he fell.

No-one else spoke.

Useless, one of them called her, and Nol felt the gun come up. A surge of terror got words past the thickness of her tongue.

Her name.

Her rank.

Her speciality.

Not, most definitely not, useless.

The gun went down.


The guards put the collars on them, after that. And showed them all what the collars could do.


Time passed, measured by bowls of gruel, by cold nights, by loosening clothes and stinging sores. In the laboratory, though, time didn't pass. In the laboratory Nol could disappear into the equations and the harmonics as she always had, could slip away from the guards and the cowed whispers of the others who, like her, had not been quite fast enough to reach their ships before the captains blew the docking clamps and lit out for safer space.

She tried, when she could, to bend things just a little, just enough so there would be some small, fatal problem down the line.  It was hard, though. She wasn't always Caldari first and scientist second.

There had been a time when those two things were a perfect complement.

Before she had been running, and then not.

Not after.

Cross Jurisdictional Issues

"This had fucking well better not be another fucking F.I.O. mindfuck," Capitaine Elienne Desorlay said sourly, grinding her cigarette out beneath her heel.

Lieutenant Charles Etay glanced at her, the corner of his mouth twitching up. "One way to find out."

Eli grunted, and followed him up the steps to the entrance of the S.C.I.D. office. Office was a little grandiose, perhaps, for what was two rooms and three people crammed up the side of a Republic Justice administration building, but law enforcement agencies had their priorities, and so this was a Liaison Office, not a Liaison Converted Stationary Storage.  And it was there to deal with Cross Jurisdictional Issues, not Potential Political Clusterfucks.


Thirty seconds into the meeting and Eli was sure this wasn't another F.I.O. mindfuck. Sixty seconds in and she was starting to wonder if she might not have been better off if it had been.

Fed stations in the Republic, jurisdictional headache number one. Still, that was one reason why she and Etay were there, that and his pretty podder girlfriend and all her ISK, and why there were little converted stationary cupboards tucked away here and there throughout the Republic and the Federation and no doubt the State and Empire too although if Fortune loves me I'll never find out. 


Usually the stations took care of their own problems, with a little help when necessary from whatever their native law-enforcement might be. In this case, on the particular Gallente station in question stuck like a pimple on an asteroid in the ass-end of Metro low-sec, that would be S.C.I.D.

Except the Republic Justice Liaison Broomcloset out there had come to the conclusion, and the S.C.I.D. Liaison Stationary Cupboard here obviously agreed, that the S.C.I.D. officers there were compromised.

Bought off, that meant. And Republic Justice wouldn't normally give a flying fuck at a rolling peshorky if a Fedo station couldn't keep its officers on the straight and narrow, but the Republic was a tiny bit sensitive about some issues.

Like slaves.

Even if they are Caldari.


Eli kept her mouth shut until the meeting was done, let Etay do what little talking there was to do. Not much. S.C.I.D. and Republic Justice had done most of it beforehand, that was clear. She and Etay were there to be told what someone snug behind a desk had decided they were going to do.

Go in without backup, where we can't trust our own people, where we can't flash tin to get out of trouble without getting in worse, and find out what's the truth behind these rumours of Caldari on a Gallente station ...


With collars around their necks.


On the sidewalk outside, however, was a different matter. "Fortune fuck me sideways, you fils de putain de merde," she snarled. "This is on you, farmboy, you and your pretty podder who thinks she can change the Cluster to suit her fancies. Look at us! Stuck out here in the cul of the Republic and about to get ourselves killed cleaning up some political shitstorm, or killed for cleaning it up if Fortune fucking smiles on us."

Etay put his hands in his pockets and smiled at his shoes. "Don't hold back," he said mildly. "How do you really feel about it?"

Eli swatted his arm, hard enough to make him wince and make her swear with the sting of her palm. "Get us out of this. Get your podder to pull some strings and get them to send someone else."

"Mmm," Etay said, and Eli could tell from long experience that her partner meant no by that, meant that's a line I won't cross, meant I'm not going to be moved on this one. "If they're right, Eli, this is pretty ugly. Those people ..."

"Fuck 'em, they're Callies, I'm not looking to get shivved in an alley for a pack of people who'd like to shoot me as soon as see me."

"Eli," Etay said patiently. "I'm Caldari."

She snorted. "One of your ancestors got cunt-struck by a piece of Callie tail back in the hither-and-yon, doesn't make you fucking anything. Don't even try that shit. You don't even drink fucking tea!"

"Still," Etay said. "Still. They're people. And Repub Juice can't sent anyone themselves. You heard them, the station is almost entirely Fed hires. Minmatar agents would stick out like sore thumbs."

"Oh, and you won't?"

He gave her his best sunny choirboy smile. "You just said I wasn't Caldari."

"Farmboy," Eli said, and stopped.  You could be the purest Gallente off the Crystal Boulevard and you'd still catch every eye in every crowd.


Oh, fuck it. Dying in bed surrounded by fat, happy grandchildren was never more than a pipe dream, anyway. Not for someone like me, anyway. 


And certainly not for pretty boys who catch the eye of pretty podders.

She lit a cigarette.  "Fine. Fucking fine. Let's go. Save your ancestral cousins from their probably just deserts, or whatever. We live through this one, farmboy, though, you will talk to that girl of yours."  She exhaled a gust of smoke, and whatever Etay had been going to say was cut off in a fit of coughing. "Doubt she wants you dead, Charlie, whatever else I think about her. Doubt she wants you dead."

Yet, anyway.

Yet.

The Consultation

"Do you know why you're here?"

Capitaine Elienne Desorlay took out a cigarette and lit it, ignoring the wrinkled nose of the man across the desk. "We'll ask the questions, M'ser Proleque," she said on a gust of smoke.

Beside her, Lieutenant Charles Etay coughed politely.  "What my partner means to say," he said smoothly, "Is that we're eager to hear how we can assist the F.I.O. in this matter of ...?"

Tomas Proleque ran his hand over his bald head. "You can assume I'm more than immune to your provincial good-cop bad-cop routine," he said, and genial as his tone was Eli felt the hair lift on her arms. "And you should assume that the last thing, the very last thing, Capitaine Desorlay, that you want, is for me to answer your questions."

Eli couldn't bring herself to nod. She drew on her cigarette instead, started at Proleque through the smoke, and waited.

Been waiting all Fortune-fucked day, after all.

Called back to the Fed on five minutes notice for a consultation, that had been the first sign something was wrong. S.C.I.D. didn't spring for interbus tickets when a comm call would do.

The only reason to haul us over here is so we're in arm's reach when they decide they don't want us leaving again.


That hadn't been good, no.

Discovering that S.C.I.D. had yanked them back to hand them over to the F.I.O. with a bow on top, just about ...


Eli had been searching her memory for what she or Charlie might have done that had the F.I.O. sniffing after them for the hours they'd been cooling their heels in a blank grey waiting room.  The Eletta business, maybe, had been the best she could come up with.

Until  Proleque looked at her, looked at Etay, and smiled. "You know Ciarente Roth," he said.

Fortune fuck me and fuck him and especially fuck all podders everywhere, good and hard.

I knew that girl was trouble. 

Etay made a mild, non-committal noise, and Eli was impressed despite herself by his restraint.

Proleque's smile widened. "Captain Roth is not the subject of today's discussion, Lieutenant Etay. Nor are her children. Your children."  Unspoken, That could change hung in the air. "I simply need to know how her father is doing."

Her ... "Father?" Eli asked.  Well, clearly, she had one, Eli, good thinking there. 

Had one, has one ... a father the F.I.O. care about. 


"I'm afraid I can't help you," Etay said. Proleque opened his mouth to speak and Etay went on, his slightly raspy voice mild and even. "I've never met the man. I don't think I've heard Captain Roth mention him more than once or twice."

"And what did she say?" Proleque was equally mild and even. Nonetheless, the air in the room seemed to chill a little. Eli felt as if she was watching a particularly fierce mindclash match, the opponents testing each other's weakness. And the first mistake will be the last.


"That he was travelling," Etay said. "That they were estranged. That she didn't know where he was and didn't care to find out."

Travelling.

F.I.O. 

Travelling.

Deep undercover, more like. 

Or ...

Dead.  

Proleque looked at something on the screen of his terminal, touched a key. Probably his shopping list, Eli thought. Trying to make us think he has some sort of incriminating transcript. She might be provincial but police-work had its universal patterns. "Has he been in contact with her?"

"She hasn't mentioned," Etay said blandly.

Proleque looked at the screen again. "That wasn't what I asked."

Don't lie for her, Charlie, Eli willed him. She's safe from men like this. You aren't.

Nor am I, for that fucking matter. 

Etay shot his cuffs and folded his hands on one knee. "I don't believe he's been in contact with her, no."

"Why?"

Etay smiled, very slightly. "Estranged."

Proleque matched the smile. "Do you know why?"

"It's not something we've discussed."

"Again, you answer a question I haven't asked," Proleque said. "Do you know why Captain Roth and her father are estranged?"

"I don't, no," Etay said, and Eli felt her heart sink as she heard the flat note of a lie in his voice.

"Would it surprise you to learn that it is due to her membership of Sansha's Nation?" Proleque asked genially.

"It would surprise me to learn that Captain Roth is a member of Sansha's Nation, yes." There was no inflection to Etay's voice.

"But not that her father objected to such an allegiance?"

Etay smiled, bland and sunny. "I imagine many fathers would."

"But you still say you have no knowledge of Captain Roth's contact with her father," Proleque said.

"I have no knowledge that Captain Roth has had any contact with her father," Etay corrected.  He smiled again. "Does M'ser Roth say they have?"

 "M'ser Roth - " Proleque said, and stopped. Eli saw the faintest flicker in his gaze, and knew, and felt Etay know beside her as well.

The match was over. And farmboy wins.

"You've misplaced him, haven't you?" Etay asked kindly.

Like he's slipped down behind the couch cushions, Eli thought, and then, on a fresh chill, they haven't 'misplaced' him.

They think the podder has.

And ... 

Not by accident.